At dusk, all three of them went to the farmhouse, where Lukas rapped on the window. A middle-aged man came out.
“We’re looking for a farmer named Martinkus,” said Lukas.
The man looked at their weapons and packs. He did not appear to be afraid, but he did not look too happy either. “He’s dead. I married his daughter, but she’s lying inside, pregnant and sick.”
“We’re partisans come in from Sweden,” said Rudis. “Someone was supposed to meet us here.”
Lukas did not like it that Rudis spoke out on his own.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said the man, and he turned to go back inside. But Lukas made him take two of them in, leaving Shimkus on guard outside.
The pale, frightened wife was lying on a bench in the kitchen, two small children playing around her. Rudis took off his hat and shook out his golden hair and smiled down on the woman. Lukas was astonished that the man imagined he could work his charm here.
“We mean no harm,” said Lukas.
“Then please take what you want and go away.”
Lukas wished he could do that, but he could not. He sat down with his knapsack and began to take things out of it. He showed them a Swedish camera, wonderfully miniature. He took out a bar of chocolate and gave it to the children. They held it in their hands, afraid, so he took it back and unwrapped it, breaking off pieces for the woman and the man as well as the children. He showed them the Swedish wrapper.
“We don’t have any ties with the partisans,” the man said eventually, “but if you tell me where you’re camped in the woods I can start looking around and send someone there.”
“Don’t send anyone. We’ll come back tomorrow to find out if you’ve learned anything.”
“Please,” said the woman, “don’t come to the house. Meet him by the shrine half a kilometre down the road. I don’t want people to see you coming here.”
They bought eggs, butter and bread from the couple, paying 350 rubles, which seemed high, and then went back to the forest.
“What do you make of that?” asked Rudis.
“They were terrified. They thought we might be agents provocateurs.”
“She was a nice-looking lady, though, for all her problems.”
For three days they camped out in different spots, warily meeting the farmer each night. Once they bought bacon and another time bread, eggs and butter. Lukas was beginning to think the farmer had found a useful private market, but on the fourth night he said he had someone for them to meet, a partisan.
Lukas asked him to bring the man into a clearing in the forest at dawn. He kept Rudis with him and asked Shimkus to stand a little way inside the forest beyond the clearing in order to cover them in case of complications. An hour before the meeting, Lukas and Shimkus combed the forest around themselves, looking for movement of partisans or interior army agents. They saw nothing.
The man the farmer brought with him was middle-aged, which was a little surprising. Older men did not do well in the partisan movement because the living conditions were so poor. This man had a very straight back and a good, if old, long brown leather coat over his jacket, and he wore a tie as well as a woollen cap. He looked somewhat familiar.
“This is the partisan I told you about,” said the farmer. “I’ve seen him around before. He calls himself Karpis. I hope you two will straighten out whatever you have to say to one another, but I ask just one thing. From here on in, leave me alone. I have a sick, pregnant wife and two children. My problems probably don’t interest you, but your problems don’t really interest me either.” He walked away without so much as a wave.
“You see how it is now,” said Karpis. “The people are tired.”
“Are you armed?” Lukas asked.
“Just a pistol.”
“I’d like to see it.”
Karpis pulled a small PPK from a pocket inside his leather coat. “Maybe you and your friend should set down your arms as well.”
Lukas and Rudis did as he asked, and Karpis knew enough about them to ask where Shimkus was, but they said he was away. Lukas asked Rudis to sit apart from them as they spoke, but Rudis ignored the order and stayed nearby. It was standard operating procedure: no man should know more than he had to. Rudis’s refusal demonstrated his incompetence and his stupidity. Now Karpis would know that Lukas’s men did not follow orders.
“The farmer tells me you come from abroad,” said Karpis. “How can this be possible?”
“We landed on the beach in a rubber raft.”
“Could you show me where you buried it?”
“I don’t think so. We don’t want to go back there. But look at this.” He took out the folder with the American money in it—a thou-sand American dollars in tens.
“This shows me you’re rich, but the money could have come from anywhere. Anything else?”
Lukas showed the miniature camera and a letter he had posted to himself just before leaving Stockholm. The postmark seemed to convince Karpis.
“And what about you?” Lukas asked. “How do I know you’re a partisan?”
“You might recognize me, for one thing. I was the mayor of Panevezys before the war.”
“Not my part of the country.”
“I’m the brother of the late president’s wife.”
Lukas looked him over. The late president had installed many of his wife’s relatives in the government. Poor former mayor. He would have lived the life of striped pants and municipal receptions until the war—a soft life. How did men like that survive now?
“Bring me up to date with the situation in the country,” said Lukas.
“We don’t carry out many missions anymore. We’re hard up for food and we’re out of touch with most of the other partisan groups. We just try to survive now. We haven’t actually fired on anyone in months. We’re down to collecting information and printing up newspapers whenever we can find the ink and the paper.”
“It sounds bad.”
“It is. What did you come here for? If I had a way out, I’d take it and never come back.”
Lukas glanced at Rudis. The man was looking more unhappy than ever, if that was possible. He had even let some of his precious curls slip out from under his cap.
“If you want, we can help you a little,” said Karpis. “My men and I can escort you to the frontier of the next partisan district. It’s true we’ve lost touch with them, but we might be able to use some of the old contacts.”
“How many men can you spare?”
“There are three of you, right?” asked Karpis.
“That’s right.”
“Then I could send along four or five escorts. We’re short of manpower—I’ll come along too.”
“Are you sure you want to go yourself?” Lukas asked.
“Don’t worry. I look old, but I’m tough.”
They agreed to confirm their plans the next day. Then it would take a couple more days to gather up the men, who were scattered in pairs in small bunkers, getting ready to settle in for the winter.
After Karpis left, Shimkus came out of the woods and Lukas told him what Karpis had said. Rudis corrected him twice on details, and Lukas told him to shut up. Rudis sulked.
“There’s something I don’t like about Karpis,” said Lukas.
“What’s that?”
“His long leather coat. It’s the kind of thing you might wear in the city to cover a revolver in your pocket, but out in the country it doesn’t make sense. It would get caught on branches, or all bunched up when you were crawling into a bunker.”